THE "PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS."
By V. D. Manet
VIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF SCRIPTURE.
It is something of an astounding nature that anyone familiar with the word of God, and at the same time professing subjection to that word, could even for an instant persuade himself it were right to aid in the construction of the pantheon of unbelief last week erected at Chicago, under the specious title of the "Parliament of Religions." The majority of the believers in Christ and his gospel have been so amazed and dazed at the proposition that they have hardly ventured to argue a subject which seems so monstrous and unreal. The actual convening of such a congress was too much like holding a Christian convention for universal Christian divorce or world-wide Bible burning. It was hardly taken seriously. But as some of the hierophants of the new style of ecumenical council requested prayer to the God of the Bible for its success, a reference to the word and testimony of God may be in order. The first parliament of religions known to sacred history was held in the green pastures and by the still waters of Eden Park, near the sources of the Euphrates. It appears to have been a summer school of religious-philosophy. It was apparently honored by the presence of at least one great intellect, who promised intellectual growth to the rest. The best people on earth were in attendance, and took part in the discussion of the interesting question raised as to the veracity24of Jehovah. The views of the higher critics of the time prevailed, and a new style of religion would undoubtedly have succeeded the ancient creed of the race at once, had not the owner of the park refused to tolerate the "parliament" on the premises. Another parliament of beliefs and sacrifices was projected by a leading agriculturist and prominent citizen of the "outsider" class in Mesopotamia. This failed, owing to the refusal of God and good men to have anything to do with it. The projector afterwards indicated the nature of the liberality and charity animating his religion by martyring the good man who refused to aid him in laying the corner-stone of a pantheon of liberal belief. There does not seem to have been any parliament of religions in the ark. The believers in such novelties all failed for some reason to engage passage in time. The modern congress of creeds will have to get along without any authentic representation of the antediluvian faiths, save the time-honored consensus of belief of Noah and his family. If Ham had his "honest doubts," or Shem evolved any religious shams of the Buddhistic, or Brahmanic, or Theosophic, or Mormonistic order from the inner depths of his "verifying faculty," it is not a matter of record. But if the people fresh from the ark failed to hold a free thinkers' convention at the foot of Mt. Ararat, the people fresh from the house of bondage did not fail to convene a parliament that honored idolatry at the very foot of Mt. Sinai, while the lightnings and thunders of God were condemning idolatry at the top of the mount. That Egyptian cult (don't spell it colt, Mr. Printer, it was a calf) was represented in a golden god, before which the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bowed down and said, "These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt!" The liberal and intellectual Aaron, as an advanced thinker, saw the necessity of preserving a niche for Jehovah in the Egyptian pantheon, and tried to stem the tide of idolatry by shouting, as he built an altar to the golden calf, "To-morrow is a feast to Jehovah!" But that lip service was all the honor Jehovah had in the Sinaitic parliament of religions. The people simply repeated their ascription of praise to Apis, and it was found by Aaron, as by many a popular prelate since, that it is easier to unchain the tiger of unbelief than to guide him into the paths of sweetness by a hurried whisper as he rushes on his prey. God knew how to deal with the synod of Sinai and Egypt. He sent Moses with a scourge of steel to whip it out of the sacred precincts, saying: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me." The sole and only parliament of religion which any true representative of Jehovah seems to have called, according to Bible testimony, was that arranged by the prophet Elijah, between himself and the prophets of Baal. The circumstances under which this was called, and the method of conducting it, are extremely significant. It was a time when Israel had been afflicted with three years of drought for idolatry. They were to be brought to repentance by seeing that the God of Israel, and not the gods of Phoenicia, held the power of heaven and earth. Elijah, by the Spirit, assembled the prophets of Baal and overthrew them. He met them with ridicule and not with honor and fellowship. He poured contempt upon their gods before Israel and the sun, and extirpated idol worship from the nation in one day. Would he have wrought this miracle of transformation had he parleyed and dissimulated with those priests of Satan, and divided Jehovah's honor with Baal?—Certainly not. Elijah understood that the first duty of religion was to honor the first commandment, and not to dishonor it. Passing over some interesting parts of Old Testament Scripture, showing God's disfavor to religious parliaments in the sense of the Chicago Broad-church, of "Jehovah, Jove, or Lord," do we find the New Testament in any-wise more "liberal" on this all-important subject? To use a cant term of the neologists, is the Christocentric view different in any degree from the deocentric view as respects sharing God's glory with the gods of paganism, or of civilized imagination?—Most assuredly not. Peter proposed a camp meeting parliament, in the name of Christ himself, on Hermon; that was rebuked, because it divided Christ's honor with that of Moses and Elijah. The God who would not allow Moses to honor the followers of Apis, or Elijah to fellowship the followers of Baal, would not even allow Moses and Elijah to honor themselves by being the second and third persons of a trinity of dwellers in tents on Mt. Hermon. God looked down from the glorious windows of his palace in the skies to say to the proposer of such a division of religious honors: "There is only One to regard and build for. That is my beloved Son. It is attention to him only that can please the Father of lights." And so, though Moses and Elijah had been talking in glory about the crucifixion itself, they faded away from the presence of God's Son, and the disciples found themselves with "Jesus only." The Christ of God will not divide honors with those who receive him, much less with those who neglect or reject him. There were abundant opportunities to hold parliaments of religion, and compromise the honor of Christ, in apostolic days, but no such gatherings were held. Peter at Pentecost might have had a few "appropriate remarks" from some representative of Roman theology, or Grecian rationalism, or from some Jewish proselyte or Sadducean free thinkers, but he let no one be named or heard but Jesus Christ. His watchword constantly before unbelievers or opposers was: "There is no other name; there is salvation in no other." Paul, too, had opportunities to put Christ on the same platform with Jupiter at Lystra, with Diana at Ephesus, with the whole Greek pantheon at Athens, but he exalted Christ alone. He was mocked and mobbed for refusing to compliment false and idolatrous faiths, and for adhering to the gospel in its exclusiveness and purity. The philosophers and rationalizers of the day called him a babbler, a madman, a pestilent and a seditious fellow, and said he was not fit to live. Had he used religious language in a "parliamentary sense," he might have been a Socrates or Confucius, but he never would have founded the glorious church of Jesus Christ, or have written the epistles of the New Testament, or have led millions of souls to everlasting glory across the flood. The wisdom of this world was nothing to Paul. He looked only to the teaching and guidance and blessing of the Spirit of Christ. All true workers for Jesus have walked in his path. Polycarp refused to offer one grain of incense to an idol. Luther abhorred the folly of Melanchthon in offering to compromise with Rome on the twin conditions of communion in two kinds, and clerical marriage, or on any conditions. Calvin, Knox, Bunyan, Wesley, and Spurgeon spurned the idea of lowering the cross of Christ to the level of the pope's toe or the hoof of the infidel. Imagine those mighty men entering the "Parliament of Religions" at Chicago. Imagine the entrance of the martyrs, who clasped their flaming fingers in glorious sufferings for God and his word, crying, "None but Christ." What would they say to hear Satan's religions be-brothered and exalted by "Christians"? They would cry with Paul, by the Holy Ghost: "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." —Herald and Presbyter.